FBI Report Reveals Scammers Stole Over $16 billion In 2024

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States published its latest Internet Crime Report this Wednesday. The document, which includes data from 2024, revealed that scammers stole around $16.6 billion that year and noted that online crimes increased by 33% compared to 2023.

According to the report, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) receives, on average, over 2,000 complaints every day from different age groups and locations—including international complaints. The agency warned about increasing cases of scams, reported losses, cryptocurrency fraud, and crimes targeting older adults

“As nearly all aspects of our lives have become digitally connected, the attack surface for cyber actors has grown exponentially,” wrote B. Chad Yarbrough, Operations Director for Criminal and Cyber at the FBI. “Last year saw a new record for losses reported to IC3, totaling a staggering $16.6 billion. Fraud represented the bulk of reported losses in 2024, and ransomware was again the most pervasive threat to critical infrastructure, with complaints rising 9% from 2023.”

The agent also noted that people over 60 years old were the most affected by scams. Older adults lost around $4.8 billion in 2024. Other age groups, like the ones between 40 and 49, and 50 and 59 lost over $2.2 billion. Younger generations shared more complaints with the FBI but also lost money.

“These rising losses are even more concerning because last year, the FBI took significant actions to make it harder, and more costly, for malicious actors to succeed,” wrote Yarbrough. “We dealt a serious blow to LockBit, one of the world’s most active ransomware groups.”

The most reported threats received by the IC3 were data breaches and ransomware, reaching over 4,800. The most reported variants of ransomware were Akira, Lockbit, RansomHub, FOG, and PLAY.

Last year, in June, the FBI retrieved more than 7,000 decryption keys from the LockBit ransomware group, and succeeded at other missions. A few days ago, the agency announced they arrested dark web launderer ElonmuskWHM during a long money-laundering operation.